What's new in Visio 2010

This article contains a snapshot of
what you can expect to see in the technical preview of Visio 2010. Some features
are incomplete and are subject to change.

If you are used to working with Visio 2007, you will discover several new
features in Microsoft Visio 2010, and you will notice that some familiar
features have been updated. To help you get your bearings quickly, this article
covers the major improvements and changes.

It's Easier to Create Diagrams

Office Fluent interface, including the Ribbon

Visio 2010 now has the Microsoft Office Fluent interface, including the
Ribbon. The Ribbon keeps the most often-used commands visible while you're
working instead of hiding them under menus or toolbars. Also, commands that you
may not have known about before are now easier to discover.

Commands are located on tabs, grouped by how they are used. The Home tab has a lot of the commands that are used most often, and
other tabs have commands that are used for special purposes. For example, to
design and format your diagram, click the Design tab to find
themes, page setup, backgrounds, borders, titles, and more.

Starting a new diagram

When you start Visio, you are presented with the New window
in a new part of the Microsoft Office Fluent UI. The New window
contains the templates you use to start a diagram.

Many of the commands that used to be on the File menu are now
in this area. When you start a new diagram from any of the templates, this space
closes and the drawing window opens. To get back to this area for saving your
file, printing, publishing, setting Visio options, or other non-diagramming
actions, click the Microsoft Backstage Button.

Shapes window update, including Quick Shapes

The Shapes window shows all the stencils that are currently
open in the document. Title bars for all the open stencils are at the top of the
window. Click a title bar to see the shapes in that stencil.

The new Quick Shapes area at the top of every stencil (above the faint
dividing line) is designed as a place for you to put the shapes you use most
often. If you want to add or remove shapes, just drag the shapes you want into
or out of the Quick Shapes area. In fact, you can rearrange the order of shapes
anywhere in the stencil by dragging them where you want them.

If you have several stencils open and you know you only need a few shapes
from each stencil, click the Quick Shapes tab to see the Quick
Shapes from all open stencils together in one place.

Finding more shapes

The More Shapes menu is now in the Shapes
window, so you don’t have to leave the Shapes window to open a
new stencil.

By default, the Search box is hidden to make more room for
shapes and stencils. To open the Search box, click More Shapes, and then click Search for Shapes. Search for Shapes uses the Windows Search engine to find shapes on
your computer, so you must have Windows Search turned on to use it. To search
the Internet for shapes, click Find Shapes Online.

Live Preview

Live Preview shows how formatting options, such as fonts and themes, will
look before you commit to them. The style you point to is applied temporarily so
you can quickly try several options.

Auto Size

Auto Size replaces the printer-paper-sized visible page in the Visio drawing
surface with an expandable page that eases the creation of larger diagrams. When
Auto Size is turned on and you drop a shape outside the current page, the page
extends to accommodate the larger diagram. Printer-paper divisions are shown by
dotted lines.

Insert and delete shapes with automatic
adjustment

If you have already created a diagram but you need to add or remove shapes,
Visio does connecting and repositioning for you. Insert a shape into a diagram
by dropping it on a connector.

The surrounding shapes automatically move to make room for the new shape, and
a new connector is added to the sequence.

When you delete a shape that’s connected in a sequence, such as the middle
shape above, the two connectors are automatically replaced by a single connector
between the remaining shapes. In this case, though, the shapes do not move to
close up the spacing, because that might not always be the right action. If you
want to adjust the spacing, you can select the shapes and click Auto
Align & Space.

Auto Align and Space

Make alignment and spacing adjustments to shapes by using the Auto Align
& Space button. You can adjust all the shapes in a diagram at the same time,
or select shapes if you want to specify which ones are adjusted.

To perform alignment and spacing adjustments, on the Home
tab, click Auto Align & Space.

To perform alignment, spacing, or orientation adjustments separately, on
the Home tab, click Position, and then click
the command you want.

AutoConnect enhancements

The AutoConnect feature makes it easier to connect shapes:

When you hold the pointer over a blue AutoConnect arrow, a mini toolbar
appears that contains up to four shapes from the Quick Shapes area of the
currently selected stencil.

If your shapes are already on the page, you can drag a connector from a
blue AutoConnect arrow of one shape and drop it on another shape. By
connecting shapes this way, you don’t need to switch to the Connector
tool.

Point to a shape on the mini toolbar to see a live preview on the page, and
click to add the shape, already connected.

Clarify the structure of diagrams

Containers

A container is a shape that visually contains other shapes on the page.
Containers make it easier to see groups of shapes that are logically related to
each other.

Containers also manage the position of member shapes by moving, copying, or
deleting the member shapes along with the container. To protect the shapes, you
can lock the contents of a container so shapes cannot be deleted or added.

Containers can automatically expand themselves as you add shapes, and also
reduce their size to fit the contents after you remove shapes.

Some containers manage sets of shapes

Some containers help you manage ordered sets of unconnected shapes by making
it easier to add, remove, and reorder the items in the list. Examples of such
shapes include Tree Control in the Wireframe diagram, and Swimlane shapes in
Flowchart and Cross Functional Flowchart diagrams. You can add the default
member shape to this kind of container by clicking the blue insertion arrow that
appears when you hold the pointer over a corner of the container.

Callouts

Use callouts to explain or describe shapes in the diagram. Callouts are
usually associated with a particular shape, and they move with the shape during
manual and automatic adjustments.

Data graphics legends

Legends explain what the icons and colors mean in diagrams that use data
graphics, so your diagram is easily understandable even without text labels
beside every data graphic.

Click the Insert Legend button, and Visio generates the
legend automatically based on the data graphics that are on the page.

Enhanced grid, alignment, and snap

New guides show when shapes are aligned and spaced evenly, and snapping
points based on alignment and spacing help you position them in the right
place.

Paste copied shapes with greater control

Visio 2010 offers two options to help you paste shapes where you want
them:

Paste shapes in the same location as the original page.

Right-click to paste at the pointer location.

Paste shapes in the same location as the original page

When you copy one or more shapes from one page and then use the Paste button or CTRL+V to paste them in a different page, the
shapes are pasted into the same relative location on the new page.

Right-click to paste at the pointer location

For greater control when pasting, right-click the page where you want the
shape to be and then click Paste. The shape is pasted in the
page with the center of the shape at the location you clicked.

Improved page tab functionality

A new Insert Page tab is available that adds a new page with
one click.

In addition, you can get to the Page Setup options for a page
directly from the page tab’s shortcut menu.

Change your view by using the status bar navigation
tools

The status bar contains tools to help you navigate diagrams and documents.
The tools include Full Screen, Zoom Level that
you can set by percentage, a Zoom slider, a Fit page
to current window button, a button to open the Pan &
Zoom window, and a button to Switch Windows.

Visio Services

Visio Services integrates your diagram with SharePoint Web parts to create a
high-fidelity, interactive experience for one person or many people at once,
even if they don’t have Visio installed on their computers. Viewers can zoom and
pan around the diagram, and follow hyperlinks in shapes.

You can publish a diagram directly to SharePoint from inside Visio 2010.
Create the diagram in Visio, use Visio to publish it to the server, and view the
diagram in a browser.

Diagrams can also be linked to data, and the view can be refreshed
automatically or by the user to stay current.

Process Management

In addition to all the diagramming improvements noted above, Visio contains
new tools to help you model, validate, and reuse complex process diagrams.

Process diagrams are visualizations of any sort of step-by-step process. They
are usually created as flowcharts, with shapes that represent steps in the
process connected by arrows that show the direction to the next step.

Validate process diagrams

You can now analyze process diagrams automatically to make sure they're
properly constructed and compliant with business logic that is defined for the
document.

Validation errors are displayed for resolution in the Issues
Window.

Visio includes sets of rules that are specific to each type of process
diagram.

Sub-processes

Sub-process diagrams help you break up complex processes into manageable
pieces. You can select a sequence of shapes:

Click Create from Selection:

Visio moves the selected shapes to a new page and replaces them with a
Subprocess shape that is automatically linked to the new page.

If you have not drawn the subprocess yet, you can click Create New to add a
Subprocess shape to the page and also a new page that is linked to the shape. If
the subprocess is already diagrammed on another page or in a different document,
you can drop a Subprocess shape on the current page, click Link to Existing, and
navigate to the subprocess page.

SharePoint workflows

Visio includes a template and shapes for designing workflows that can be
imported into SharePoint Designer. You can also take workflow files that were
created in SharePoint Designer and open them in Visio, which generates a diagram
of the workflow that you can view and modify. You can pass a file back and forth
between the two with no loss of data or functionality.

SharePoint process repository

The process repository is a site template that is included with SharePoint.
It provides a place to share and collaborate on process diagrams. The repository
has built-in file access control and version control; users can view the process
diagram simultaneously and edit the diagram without corrupting the original.

New and Updated Diagram Types and
Compatibility

Improved swimlane management in cross-functional
flowcharts

Cross-functional flowchart diagrams use the new Container and List
functionality to improve swimlane management, and support the concepts of phase
and straddling shapes.

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN)
diagrams

Create flowcharts that follow the Business Process Modeling Notation 1.2
standard, and use the new validation tool to help find issues that you can
correct before finishing the diagram.